In a conventional debit transaction with a merchant, a consumer typically swipes his or her card and elects to proceed with a debit transaction. Following the election of a debit transaction, the debit transaction is typically routed to a suitable PIN (personal identification number)-type network based upon preferences of a card issuing entity, such as a financial institution that issued a debit card to the customer.
For example, as shown in FIG. 1, a data flow of a conventional debit transaction 100 can include some or all of the following: (1) At a merchant location, a consumer swipes his or her debit card at a point of sale terminal to pay for a purchase; (2) the terminal will prompt the consumer for a PIN (if the terminal is enabled to accept PIN transactions); (3) the consumer either enters a PIN or elects to transact without a PIN, therefore creating a signature debit transaction; (4) when a PIN is entered, the merchant's processing system interrogates the transaction to determine a method instructed by the issuing bank or financial institution for routing the PIN transaction; and (5) the directions for routing to the enabled PIN network is typically based on an analysis of a BIN table, which is managed and controlled by the issuing bank or financial institution.
There could be opportunities to improve conventional systems and methods for routing debit transactions.